Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (129 page)

Kim spoke of some management changes that could help his system stay alive. One was to hold qualifying examinations instead of assigning people more or less at random to such demanding jobs as handling foreign trade. “In organs like Foreign Economic Cooperation, anyone who knows Kim Guk-tae can join his outfit,” he remarked (mentioning the official who had gotten reformer Kim Dal-hyon demoted and sent off to the provinces). “We need to change this and require specific knowledge of foreign trade.” He spoke favorably of sending students abroad for training. “In China, one of Deng Xiaoping’s great feats was to send two thousand or so students abroad annually to study, and upon their return they were given important jobs,” Kim
said. North Korea should emulate Deng on this point. “We have people at the top who don’t have even the vaguest idea of how to get our economy moving. All they are able to think about is how much pay they are getting. Such is our sad situation and we must change it fast. Many of our workers have poor or no concepts of money. They are completely in the dark on making profits. They know about meeting production quotas, but they have no idea how to sell the products and make profits.”

Those were strong criticisms indeed. But it was not that Kim Jong-il was ready to praise the capitalist system, after having struggled against the alien Western system throughout his career. “To be honest, we like the current financial meltdown in Asia,” he told his visitors. “Some of our people in charge of our economy had harbored some illusions about emulating the capitalist economy of Asia, but now the current crisis made them realize how wise Leader Kim Il-sung’s policy
of juche
is. It was a rude awakening to these people.” He added, “Currently we are poor and our life is hard, but you won’t see any people on earth that is as united as we are.”

Casting about for reasons to be optimistic, Kim imagined that North Korea could reverse its fortunes by turning into what, in his vision, sounded like a new Kuwait or Brunei. “We have untapped oil fields, and once we develop our oil fields our economy will change dramatically. Once we get the oil flowing, we won’t need to work our farms. We will sell our oil to the Japanese devils and buy their rice. Our oil will be like a nuclear weapon.”

On a more mundane level he showed a willingness to buy from successful countries their used equipment, such as tile factories and steel-rolling mills, to facilitate the manufacturing that North Korea still would need to do in addition to encouraging tourism. The problem was to avoid loss of face, a fate almost worse than death for a traditionally minded East Asian. So he asked his visitors to have Chongryon serve as intermediary in such deals. “Of course we can obtain these things through normal trades,” he said. “But how can we save our face and ask the Japanese devils for cheap used merchandise? Our trading people are reluctant to negotiate such deals, and Chongryon should step in and help us here.”

Economic backwardness had become so apparent as to tarnish the North’s image among impressionable young South Koreans. Many of them idealized Kim Il-sung as a great patriot and studied
his juche
philosophy, even after the successful end to South Koreans’ struggle against military-backed dictatorships at home. By the time Kim Il-sung died in 1994, though, the economic failure of the North Korean system had become too obvious for any but the most devout Southern leftist to ignore. The South Korean news media, overcoming the taboo I had encountered in the 1970s, were throwing major resources into reporting on North Korean affairs. Of course there was far
more negative than positive to report. If there was a defining moment in the decline of the North’s image among idealistic South Korean leftists, perhaps it came in 1997 when no less a figure than Hwang Jang-yop defected to the South. Hwang was the North Korean senior official widely credited with having developed
t
h
e juche
ideology.

A 1999 scandal in Seoul illustrated the disillusionment that resulted among some South Koreans who had been beating the drums for Pyongyang. Kim Young-hwan, one of the most prominent leaders of pro-Pyongyang 1980s student radicals who called themselves Jusapa, the
juche
ideology faction, was reported to have confessed that he was a spy for Pyongyang. According to the National Intelligence Service (the former KCIA, in its latest renaming), Kim Young-hwan, by then a practically middle-aged thirty-six, confessed that he had joined Pyongyang’s spy service in 1989 at the behest of a North Korean agent. Kim said he was then taken to the North on a semi-submersible spy vessel and there joined the Workers’ Party, received a medal and met Kim Il-sung—-who directed him to undertake development of a pro-Pyongyang underground and start a legal political party in the South. That he did, bringing in other veterans of the student anti-government movement.

Kim Young-hwan grew disillusioned with the North Korean system. In a 1995 magazine interview, he denounced
t
h
e juche
ideology. He asserted that Pyongyang had been seriously on his case from then on, scheming to assassinate him for his betrayal. He did not go to the South Korean authorities right away but, in fear for his life, fled to China. When he returned home and spilled the beans, the prosecution recommended leniency.

Such incidents did not by any means cause the South Korean left to disappear. Sympathy for the Northern brethren would remain strong. The anti-Americanism that had become pronounced in the 1980s would continue to thrive and even grow in the South. But Kim Jong-il, unlike his late father, could hardly be seen realistically as leader of or role model for a future South Korean revolution. To the extent he recognized that, it was all the more reason why he needed to do something about the economy.

Being able to point to South Korea as an implacable enemy had been, from the beginning, an essential element in the North Korean regime’s control of its people. Thus it seemed significant that in April 2000, practically on the eve of South Korea’s National Assembly elections, Pyongyang appeared to endorse blatantly the soft-line “sunshine” policy on North-South relations of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The endorsement came in the form of a mutual announcement of plans for a June summit in Pyongyang. The agreement for the South Korean president to meet Kim Jong-il was reached in a Beijing session, five days before an election that observers deemed too
close to call. It seemed clear that both sides hoped the announcement would give Kim Dae-jung’s party the push it needed to achieve a majority in the national legislature, so that its policies could be continued.

That move came despite the fact that Southern hard-liners, if they took power in Seoul, “would provide more convincing bogeymen for the benefit of Northern propagandists. The South’s chief opposition party was highly critical of Kim Dae-jung’s use of aid to lure North Korea into shifting its emphasis from military preparations to economic reconstruction. “Keep it at home,” opposition representatives repeatedly urged. “South Koreans need the help more.”

The fact that North Korea at the moment had decided to endorse soft-line South Korean candidates did not prove it had said a permanent fare-well to enmity and militarism. Long-time Pyongyang-watchers believed that the Northern leadership kept various strategies for interim survival and some form of ultimate victory going at once and would shift back and forth among them as it saw advantage in doing so. In that regard, it was noteworthy that the North’s version of the announcement differed from the South’s in saying Kim Dae-jung’s visit to Pyongyang would be at his request, instead of at the invitation of Kim Jong-il. The first conclusion to be drawn was that Pyongyang did not think enemies should be made to look like sought-after guests. (Only later would it become clear just how accurate Pyongyang had been in saying this was Kim Dae-jung’s show.)

News of the summit announcement suggested that Kim Jong-il had looked over the possibilities for fixing his busted economy and realized that it could hardly be done without the participation of the estranged but filthy-rich Koreans living south of the Demilitarized Zone—-who by that time had shown their staying power by weathering the Asian financial crisis. Hyundai, with its tour cruises to Mount Kumgang, had given Pyongyang a tantalizing sample of just how much help the South could provide if relations improved. And the basic strategy embodied in both Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy and the South Korean–American-Japanese “Perry process,” named after the former defense secretary, was to combine aid with credible assurances of domestic non-interference and hook Pyongyang on peaceful coexistence. The eventual goal was to end the military threat that Pyongyang posed to the South and, with its development of weapons of mass destruction, to other parts of the world.

The cynicism of South Korean opposition politicians was understandable enough. After all, the two sides had gotten that far in 1994 only to see a planned summit fall through. Many many, many lesser initiatives also had come to naught over the decades. Was there anything different this time? There was, and the differences provided some grounds for hope that something might eventually come of the new initiative.

One difference was that the North’s economy, despite some visible
recovery from the worst years of the mid-1990s, was in far worse shape both absolutely and relative to South Korea’s than it had been when earlier initiatives failed. Kim Jong-il, although confused or naive on occasion, was not stupid. Neither he nor anyone else in Pyongyang could be unaware that the economy needed to be fixed. Kim Jong-il had blamed fall guys at home: ministers and other high-level officials who had tried to use the inherited Stalinist policies but (predictably enough, from a capitalist perspective) always failed. Some foreign intelligence people believed that the executions and banishments of thus-failed officials had begun to backfire, causing other officials who feared they might be next on the list to reflect privately upon where the blame really lay.

Kim, as we have seen, harbored many private reservations about his own regime’s policies. He had told South Korea’s Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung he wanted to learn about the New Communities movement that military dictator Park Chung-hee had employed in laying the foundations for South Korea’s largely successful market economy. Perhaps, commented a writer for South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, “2000 will be the year to test whether [Kim Jong-il] will transform himself into the North Korean version of Park Chung-hee.”
⁷
That did not happen, although in May 2002 Park’s fifty-year-old daughter, Park Geun-hye, received a VIP reception when she visited Pyongyang.
⁸

Why had Kim not moved faster to change things? Like some foreigners,
⁹
reform-minded North Korean officials might blame hard-line communist traditionalist holdovers, including military men, for tying his hands. Still, some officials had to find it hard to escape the thought that Kim’s power was enormous; if only he had sufficient will to take risks in pursuit of a clear vision of meaningful change, he should have a good chance of succeeding. Regardless of his status as dictator, Kim must have realized that some in the elite circles just beneath him would not accept his policy failures forever. Such reasoning could help explain why he saw detente with South Korea as a major opportunity to make some changes that might help ensure his longer-term survival.

The televised reception given Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang on June 13, 2000, was a revelation to many non–North Korean viewers. It showed a relaxed, confident and witty Kim Jong-il, the perfect host. Seventeen years after his first, initially sour foray into diplomacy in China, he appeared at last to have developed charisma worthy of the heir to Kim Il-sung. He personally went to the airport to receive Kim Dae-jung, clasping his hand and showing the deference due to an elder. “I am sure the people in South Korea were surprised to see you come to greet me,” Kim Dae-jung told him as they began their first substantive meeting the next day.

Kim Jong-il displayed a previously underappreciated talent for making sly jokes. “Some Europeans have wondered “why I am so reclusive,” he remarked to his Southern counterpart. “I am not such a great figure worthy to be called a recluse. The fact is I have made many secret trips to countries like China and Indonesia. How is it that people say I made a rare appearance to welcome you? Whatever the case, I have been here and there without people knowing.”

In one remark he revealed both his addiction to news and something that could pass for compassion. He had watched South Korean television broadcasts to see how Kim Dae-jung’s reception had been covered, he said. “I saw how excited the South Koreans were—especially those who have hometowns in the North, and North Korean defectors. I saw how many of them had tears in their eyes, anxiously waiting for news about their hometowns.” Turning to a high official who accompanied him, he added, “There were scenes of people actually crying.”

An article by a Seoul correspondent of Taiwan’s
Taipei Times
reported Southerners’ altered perceptions. Along with the historic handshake, “his casual and jocular manner yesterday is transforming his rogue image in Seoul,” the article said. It quoted one Seoul resident as saying, “I always thought of him as a loser with a complex, but seeing him on TV has really changed my image of him. He behaved like the guy next door and appeared normal.” The writer reported that on television “Kim Jong-il appeared comfortable and spoke in a booming voice in contrast with the seemingly fatigued South Korean president.” The North Korean leader’s “confident behavior during the summit is changing his image from one of a weak, second-class heir to that of a statesman.”
¹⁰

Speaking the same language, the two leaders were able to pack some serious and sometimes frank discussion into their main session. As related in a Seoul speech soon afterward by General Hwang Won-duk, the South Korean president’s foreign affairs and security advisor, one exchange went as follows: “Kim Jong-il said, ‘The Korean problems must be resolved by the Koreans themselves. Don’t you agree?’ Kim Dae-jung replied, ‘Yes, indeed. That is what we have been asking for and we agree with you completely’ Kim Jong-il shot back, ‘Then why do you promote your alliance with the United States and Japan to stifle us?’”